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sammywol and I watched the third episode of the current Doctor Who season, "School Reunion", last night.
It were fab.
I particularly enjoyed the light touch used in looking at the nature of the Doctor's relationships with his assistants. The scene with Sarah Jane in the restaurant was nicely played, I thought, and both writer and director resisted any urge to lengthen the scene just to pump up the pathos.
But. "Shooty dog thing"? Definitely a nod to Whedon, don't you think? Well, it made me laugh.
I did have just the slightest difficulty in watching Tony Head play a (very Buffy) villain in a dark suit, given that I remembered the BtVS commentary from the Season 2 (I think) DVDs where it was revealed that he often wore no trousers on set if the shooting was to be all torsos or head shots. Too damn hot on set, and probably a curious sort of louche one-upmanship, I suppose, but it did make Tony Head the Whovian Villain a little hard to take seriously. Damn my overactive visual imagination.
sammywol and I watched the third episode of the current Doctor Who season, "School Reunion", last night.It were fab.
I particularly enjoyed the light touch used in looking at the nature of the Doctor's relationships with his assistants. The scene with Sarah Jane in the restaurant was nicely played, I thought, and both writer and director resisted any urge to lengthen the scene just to pump up the pathos.
But. "Shooty dog thing"? Definitely a nod to Whedon, don't you think? Well, it made me laugh.
I did have just the slightest difficulty in watching Tony Head play a (very Buffy) villain in a dark suit, given that I remembered the BtVS commentary from the Season 2 (I think) DVDs where it was revealed that he often wore no trousers on set if the shooting was to be all torsos or head shots. Too damn hot on set, and probably a curious sort of louche one-upmanship, I suppose, but it did make Tony Head the Whovian Villain a little hard to take seriously. Damn my overactive visual imagination.
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I am glad Sarah Jane brought up the town where the Doctor had left her instead of Croydon. That had botehred me since I was a child. I think that scared me mroe than the Daleks, the idea of being left in a place that looked like home but, crucially, wasn't really home, and with no means of getting home either. To the mind of a small child that is an insoluble problem.
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I wondered whether that was improvised by Head and not in the script (it was his line, right?)
I was quite impressed with School Reunion: I was thankful to see a reasonably well written episode follow on from two that I thought were a bit weak in the writing department.
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But then I like the Gloranthan Ducks too.
ducks
Re: ducks
I regret than Elfpak and Dwarfpak never made it to light either, though the dwarves got a lot of coverage in Different Worlds, I suppose. I wonder if Mongoose will address either of those races in their Second Age stuff that supposedly coming out for their new version of RuneQuest later this year.
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I missed the second episode and was just so glad that Tennant was doing a good job as the Doctor that I didn't really worry too much about the first episode. I shamelessly enjoyed the camping up bits with Rose and then the Doctor possessed by skin-lady (I've forgotten her name).
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I thought the second episode also had nice production values and some interesting bits, but in the end depended far too much on "actors run screaming down hallway from threat" just as did the previous episode. Surely some of those scenes could have been trimmed in favour of better story-line development?
School Reunion felt more like the right balance between story, character, and action, and closer to the best episodes of the Eccleston years.
And, yes, I think Tennant is doing a good job. He doesn't do "tough Doctor" quite as well as Eccleston, but he's much better at "whack Doctor" than Eccleston. Billy Piper is just as good (perhaps better) -- although I can't say I"m at all keen on the new hair-do... 8P